Daily Archives: February 12, 2018

Quarrymen

In August 1956: named after his school, John Lennon forms The Quarrymen, The band performed what was known in England as “skiffle” music which was originally an early 20th century American style music. (see July 6, 1957)

August Music et al

Ringo Rory Storm

In August 1959: Ringo Starr begins drumming for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. (Ringo would be Rory’s drummer until August 18, 1960). (see Aug 29)

August Music et al

Beat Brothers

In August 1961: Tony Sheridan and the Beatles or Beat Brothers released “My Bonnie/The Saints (Go Marching In) in Germany. (see Oct 28)

August Music et al

Sam Cooke

In August 1963, Sam Cooke released Night Beat album.

August Music et al

Bob Dylan

In August, 1964: “I’m Going to Get My Baby Out of Jail” by Len Chandler & Bernice Johnson Reagon. Dylan “stole” the Len Chandler tune to accompany his “The Death of Emmett Till.” (see March 11, 1962) (see Aug 8)

August Music et al

Pink Floyd

August Music et al

Vietnam

James Brown

In August 1968, James Brown released “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” (see Nov 9)

August Music et al

Santana

In August, 1969: Santana (Carlos Santana age 22) released its first album, Santana. In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, Langdon Winner panned Santana as “a masterpiece of hollow techniques” and “a speed freak’s delight – fast, pounding, frantic music with no real content”. He compared the music’s effect to methedrine, which “gives a high with no meaning”, finding Rollie and Santana’s playing repetitively unimaginative amidst a monotony of incompetent rhythms and inconsequential lyrics.

Remembering Isaac Woodard

March 18, 1919 – September 23, 1992

Honorable Discharge

Isaac Woodard grew up in North Carolina and on October 14, 1942 he enlisted in the U.S. Army becoming one of the one million African-Americans who served in the U.S. military during World War II.

He served in the Pacific Theater in a labor battalion as a longshoreman and was promoted to sergeant. He earned a battle star for his by unloading ships under enemy fire in New Guinea.

On February 12, 1946 he received an honorable discharge.

Shull blinds Isaac Woodard

Rest Stop

That same day the 26-year-old Woodard Jr, still in uniform, was on a Greyhound Lines bus traveling from Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia. He was en route to Winnsboro, South Carolina to pick up his wife and then go to New York City with her to visit his parents.

A a stop in North Carolina he asked the bus driver if there was time to use the rest room. The driver cursed and said “No.” Woodard cursed back. The driver said to go and hurry.

Woodard did.

Shull blinds Isaac Woodard

Beating

Later, the driver stopped the bus in Batesburg (now Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina), near Aiken. He contacted the police and told them that a passenger was drunk and causing a disturbance on the bus.

The police arrived and the driver told Woodard to leave the bus. He did. The driver told the police that Woodard was the one who’d been drunk and disorderly. Woodard tried to explain that he was neither, but the police struck Woodard with a billy club.

A struggle ensued, but other police stepped in, threatened to shoot Woodard, and he gave up.

The police took Woodard to the town jail, knocking him out on the way, and arrested him for disorderly conduct, accusing him of drinking beer in the back of the bus with other soldiers. The repeated beatings had blinded Woodard.

Shull blinds Isaac Woodard

Jailed, guilty, fined, hospitalized

The following morning, the police sent Woodard before the local judge, who found him guilty and fined him fifty dollars. The soldier requested medical assistance, but it took two more days for a doctor to be sent to him. Not knowing where he was and suffering from amnesia, Woodard ended up in a hospital in Aiken, South Carolina, receiving substandard medical care.

Three weeks after he was reported missing by his relatives, Woodard was discovered in the hospital. He was immediately rushed to a US Army hospital in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Though his memory had begun to recover by that time, doctors found both eyes were damaged beyond repair.

Shull blinds Isaac Woodard

NAACP

Woodard and his mother

July 25, 1946: the NY Times reported that after a July 24 meeting at the New York headquarters of the NAACP, “Charles Bolte, national chairman of the American Veterans Committee, Charles Klair, director of the veterans’ bureau of the CIO, Aurhtur Pearl of the Duncan Parish Post, Marican Legion, Barnard Harker of the American Jewish Congress, and representatives of the United Negro and Allied Veterans and the Hawaiian Association for Civic Unity, members of several veterans’ organizations and civic groups voted yesterday to form a committee to seek compensation for Woodard.

Waler White, the NAACP executive secretary, urged support of petitions to President Truman and the Veterans Administration to have Woodard’s case adjudicated as having happened in the line of duty as Woodard had been discharged less than 24 hours when the blinding occurred.

Shull blinds Isaac Woodard

Cause célèbre

Orson Wells, the well-known actor, director, and radio personality took up Woodard’s story.

On July 28, 1946, on his popularABC radio show, Wells’s read of the deposition and followed with his own comments. Well’s next four broadcasts continued to include comments regarding Woodard’s story.

The citizens of Aiken became incensed over Welles’s broadcasts and requested an apology.

In later broadcasts, Wells would refer to Aiken’s request, but issued no apology.

On August 6, 1946, the Aiken’s Lions Club issued a statement that read in part, “We as citizens and business men of Aiken have implicit confidence in these officials and, having been advised of the circumstances of this case, are convinced that this incident did not occur in Aiken, SC.” (NYT abstract)

Shull blinds Isaac Woodard

Blinded Veterans Association

Joe Louis and Neil Scott help Isaac Woodard up a set a stairs soon after a beating left him blind. Ossie Leviness New York Daily News

August 8, 1946: more than 400 members of the Blinded Veterans Association welcomed Woodard as a member at the Association headquarters in NYC.

A NYT article about the event reported that the NAACP had filed an application to American Red Cross on Woodard’s behalf for the injuries he received.

Shull blinds Isaac Woodard

Aiken exonerated

August 13, 1946: media had reported that the Woodard beating and blinding had occurred in the town of Aiken, South Carolina, On this date, Leo M Cadison, Deputy Director of the Division of Public Information in Washington, DC sent Aiken telegram that exonerated the city from blame. (NYT abstract)

Shull blinds Isaac Woodard

Benefit Concert

August 18, 1946: The Amsterdam News Welfare Fund and the Isaac Woodard Benefit Committee held a concert for Woodward in Lewisohn Stadium in New York City. The benefit included such entertainers as Orson Welles, Woody Guthrie, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday and Milton Berle. 20,000 attended.

NYC Mayor o”Dwyer spoke saying, “first and foremost there must be equal protection by those entrusted with law enforcement, and here there can be no equivocation and no discrimination in treatment. Commissioner Wallander of the Police Department has recently issued a statement of policy to the police fore, again emphasizing to them this well understood policy of my administration. That directive must be observed as long as I am Mayor of New York, not only in the police, but all other departments.” (NYT abstract)

Woody Guthrie later wrote the song “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard” “so’s you wouldn’t be forgetting what happened to this famous Negro soldier less than three hours after he got his Honorable Discharge down in Atlanta….” (lyrics from the fortune city site)

Shull blinds Isaac Woodard

President Truman intervenes

Truman’s letter to AG Tom Clark

September 19, 1946, NAACP Executive Secretary Walter Francis White met with President Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office to discuss the Woodard case. Gardner later wrote that when Truman “heard this story in the context of the state authorities of South Carolina doing nothing for seven months, he exploded.”

September 20, 1946: Truman wrote a letter to Attorney General Tom C. Clark demanding that action be taken to address South Carolina’s reluctance to try the case.

Clark announcement

September 26, 1946: the US Department of Justice filed a criminal information in the Federal Court in Columbia, South Carolina alleging that Lynwood Shull had beaten and tortured Woodard in violation of the civil rights statute.

September 28, 1946: Shull posted a $2,000 bond for his appearance in the United States District Court on Nov. 4.

October 2, 1946: Chief of Police Linwood Shull and several of his officers were indicted in U.S. District Court in Columbia, South Carolina. It was within federal jurisdiction because the beating had occurred at a bus stop on federal property and at the time Woodard was in uniform of the armed services. The case was presided over by Judge Julius Waties Waring.

Shull blinds Isaac Woodard

Travesty of a Trial

Judge Julius Waties Waring.

November 5, 1946: the trial ended. By all accounts, the trial was a travesty. The local U.S. Attorney charged with handling the case failed to interview anyone except the bus driver, a decision that Judge Waring, a civil rights proponent, believed was a gross dereliction of duty.

Waring later wrote of being disgusted at the way the case was handled at the local level, commenting, “I was shocked by the hypocrisy of my government…in submitting that disgraceful case….”

The defense did not perform better. When the defense attorney began to shout racial epithets at Woodard, Waring stopped him immediately. During the trial, the defense attorney stated to the all-white jury that “if you rule against Shull, then let this South Carolina secede again.” After Woodard gave his account of the events, Shull firmly denied it. He claimed that Woodard had threatened him with a gun, and that Shull had used his nightclub to defend himself. During this testimony, Shull admitted that he repeatedly struck Woodard in the eyes.

After thirty minutes of deliberation, the jury found Shull not guilty on all charges, despite his admission that he had blinded Woodard. The courtroom broke into applause upon hearing the verdict.

November 13, 1947: Woodward had sued the Atlantic Greyhound Corporation for $50,000. On this date, a jury decided against Woodard. (NYT abstract)

Shull blinds Isaac Woodard

Aftermath

Such miscarriages of justice by state governments influenced a move towards civil rights initiatives at the federal level. Truman subsequently established a national interracial commission, made a historic speech to the NAACP and the nation in June 1947 in which he described civil rights as a moral priority, submitted a civil rights bill to Congress in February 1948, and issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 on June 26, 1948, desegregating the armed forces and the federal government.

Isaac Woodard faded into obscurity while his story and the tragic stories of many other African-Americans continued be fuel for both those seeking equality and those seeking to continue the status quo.

Woodard lived in the New York City area for the rest of his life. He died at age 73 in the Veterans Administration Hospital in the Bronx on September 23, 1992.

He was buried with military honors at the Calverton National Cemetery (Section 15, Site 2180) in Calverton, New York.

BLACK HISTORY

Dred Scott

In August 1842: the Army discharged Dr Emerson–Scott’s owner– and Emerson returned to St. Louis. He later moved to Iowa, a free territory, but left the Scott family in St. Louis where Dred and Harriet Scott were hired out to various people. (see Dred Scott for expanded story)

US Labor History

In August 1881: Atlanta’s municipal authorities took direct action and arrested strikers and fined members who were making house visits, but the actions have little effect and the strikers win their demands. (APWU article) (Labor History, see September 5, 1882; BH, see January 22, 1883)

SCOTTSBORO BOYS

In August 1938: the Alabama Pardon Board declined to pardon Haywood Patterson and Ozie Powell. (see Scottsboro for expanded story)

Emmett Till

In August 1955: Emmett Till’s great uncle Moses Wright traveled from Mississippi to Chicago to visit family. At the end of his stay, Wright planned to take Till’s cousin, Wheeler Parker, back to Mississippi with him to visit relatives. Emmett learned of these plans he begged his mother to let him go along. Initially, Mamie Till said no. She wanted to take a road trip to Omaha, Nebraska and attempted to lure Till to join her with the promise of open-road driving lessons. But Till desperately wanted to spend time with his cousins in Mississippi and she gave her permission. (BH, see Aug 13; see Till for expanded story)

Muhammad Ali

In August 1960: after winning a spot on the US Olympic team, 18-year-old Cassius Clay nearly refused participate because of his fear of flying. Joe Martin’s son told the Louisville Courier-Journal, “He finally agreed to fly. But then he went to an army surplus store and bought a parachute and actually wore it on the plane. It was a pretty rough flight, he was down in the aisle, praying with his parachute on.” (Black History, see Aug 31 – Sept 6; Ali, see September 5, 1960)

August Peace Love Art Activism

Emma Goldman

Freiheit

August – December 1889: Goldman found work at a NYC corset factory. She also worked at the office of an anarchist newspaper, Freiheit, and helped organize the November 11 Haymarket Commemoration. She and Alexander Berkman share an apartment with Modest Stein, and Helene and Anna Minkin.

Goldman speaks

In August 1893: Goldman addressed a public meeting, urging those in need to take bread if they are hungry. Four days later, she lead a march of 1,000 people to Union Square, where, speaking in German and English, she repeats her belief that workers are entitled to bread. The speech leads to her arrest. (see Goldman for expanded story)

August Peace Love Art Activism

United Farm Workers

Bracero Program

In August 1942: with a shortage of workers due to the US entry into World War II, the US and Mexico made a series of laws and agreements, known as the Bracero Program (“strong arm” in Spanish), for the importation of temporary contract laborers from Mexico to the United States. (Bracero dot org article)

César E. Chávez

From 1946 – 48: Chávezin the Navy. At the time Mexican-Americans could only work as deckhands or painters. Chávez described his experience in the military as “the two worst years of my life.”

In 1948: out of the Navy, Chávez married Helen Fabela.

Community Service Organization

In 1952: Chávez met Fred Ross and joined the Community Service Organization.

Dolores Huerta

In 1955: Dolores Huerta co-founds the Stockton, CA chapter of the Community Service Organization.

Bracero program

In 1957: the peak year of the Bracero program: 192,000 Mexican workers imported. Along with Chicanos, the braceros soon became the most important component of the California agricultural work force after World War II.

Theoretically, the bracero program provided standard contracts covering wages, hours, transportation, housing, and working conditions. The American government guaranteed the provision of emergency medical care, workmen’s compensation, and disability and death benefits. In reality, many of these provisions were never enforced and the bracero system perpetuated the poverty of California’s migratory laborers. Between 1950 and 1960, the earnings of three million Mexican nationals employed in 275 crop areas were effectively frozen; average annual wages in fact declined slightly, from $1,680 in 1950 to $1,666 in 1959. (Bracero, see December 31, 1964)

Chavez confronts Bracero

In 1958: Chávez works in Oxnard, a leading citrus-growing region north of Los Angeles, for 18 months confronting the bracero issue.

Agricultural Workers Association

In 1960: Dolores Huerta co-founded the Agricultural Workers Association to set up voter registration drives and pressed local governments for housing improvements. (Chavez, see March 31, 1962; Voting Rights, see May 6)

August Peace Love Art Activism

LSD

Diseases of the Nervous System

In August 1950: “L. S. D. 25 As an Aid in Psychotherapy” was the first American article about LSD. It appeared in Diseases of the Nervous System. The article presented the possibility that LSD might be useful as an aid to psychotherapy. (text of article)

Al Hubbard

In 1951: Al Hubbard first tried LSD. Hubbard was an early proponent for the drug during the 1950s. He is reputed to have been the “Johnny Appleseed of LSD” and the first person to emphasize LSD’s potential as a visionary or transcendental drug. Hubbard may have introduced more than 6,000 people to LSD, including scientists, politicians, intelligence officials, diplomats, and church figures. Hubbard, then forty-nine years old, eagerly sought out others familiar with hallucinogenic drugs, including Aldous Huxley, the eminent British novelist who for years had been preoccupied with the specter of drug-induced thought control.

“Most people are walking in their sleep,” Hubbard said. “Turn them around, start them in the opposite direction and they wouldn’t even know the difference. [but] give them a good dose of LSD and let them see themselves for what they are.”

Charles Savage

In 1952: Charles Savage published the first study on the use of LSD to treat depression (see December 1952)

Kesey/Leary

August Peace Love Art Activism

Cold War

HUAC

In August 1955: the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) subpoenaed Seeger. Seeger. Earlier that summer he had written: “We the people suffer by not having the songs we need. We need thousands of new songs these days: humor to poke fun at some of the damn foolishness going on in the world; songs of love and consciences and stir our indignation and anger.” He was an uncooperative witness, gave short answers and asked to show them why the song, “Wasn’t That a Time” was a patriotic song.

COINTELPRO

In 1956: the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program [COINTELPRO] began. It initiated a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted aimed at surveiling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations, particularly the Communist Party of America. COINTELPRO eventually enlarged to include disruption of the Socialist Workers Party (1961), the Ku Klux Klan (1964), the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party (1966), and the entire New Left social/political movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups (1968). (Democracy Now articles on COINTELPRO) (see June 21)

August Peace Love Art Activism

Quarrymen

In August 1956: named after his school, John Lennon forms The Quarry Men, The band performed what was known in England as “skiffle” music which was originally an early 20th century American style music. (see July 6, 1957)

Ringo Rory Storm

In August 1959: Ringo Starr begins drumming for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. (Ringo would be Rory’s drummer until August 18, 1960). (see Aug 29)

Beat Brothers

In August 1961: Tony Sheridan and the Beatles or Beat Brothers released “My Bonnie/The Saints (Go Marching In) in Germany. (see Oct 28)

Pink Floyd

Vietnam

James Brown

In August 1968, James Brown released “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” (see Nov 9)

Santana

In August, 1969: Santana (Carlos Santana age 22) released its first album, Santana. In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, Langdon Winner panned Santana as “a masterpiece of hollow techniques” and “a speed freak’s delight – fast, pounding, frantic music with no real content”. He compared the music’s effect to methedrine, which “gives a high with no meaning”, finding Rollie and Santana’s playing repetitively unimaginative amidst a monotony of incompetent rhythms and inconsequential lyrics.

John & Yoko

In August 1971: John & Yoko rent an apartment on Bank Street in NYC’s Grenwich Village. (see Aug 1)

Eric Clapton #1

In August 1974: Eric Clapton’s cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” reached #1 on US singles charts.

August Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

In August 1966: after transgender customers become raucous in a 24-hour San Francisco cafeteria, management called police. When a police officer manhandled one of the patrons, she threw coffee in his face and a riot ensued, eventually spilling out onto the street, destroying police and public property. Following the riot, activists established the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, the first peer-run support and advocacy organization in the world. (see January 1, 1967)

Ego-Dystonic Homosexuality

In August 1987: the American Psychological Association removed the diagnosis of Ego-Dystonic Homosexuality–a persistent lack of heterosexual arousal and distress from a pattern of unwanted homosexual arousal–from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III [DSM-III]. “Whereas the American Psychological Association has been on record since 1975 that ‘homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social and vocational capabilities’…be it resolved that the American Psychological Association urge its members not to use… the ‘302.00 Ego-Dystonic Homosexuality’ diagnosis in the current DSM–III or future editions of either document.” (see Aug 28)

Freedom to Marry

In August 2010: CNN released the first poll to show a national majority supporting the freedom to marry. The poll asked, “Do you think gays and lesbians should have a constitutional right to get married and have their marriage recognized by law as valid?” 52 percent of the respondents said “Yes,’ 46 percent “No.” (see Aug 4)

August Peace Love Art Activism

Native Americans

Alcatraz Takeover

In August 1970: California governor Ronald Reagan announced a $50,000 planning grant to the Bay Area Native American Council for programs addressing the needs of urban Indians in the San Francisco Bay Area. (see Aug 21)

Kennewick Man

In August 2002: the U.S. District Court of Oregon ruled that bones of the 9,000 year-old human remains known as Kennewick Man, found in the Columbia River in Washington, be returned to the five Indian tribes that have claimed him as their ancient ancestor, as determined by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. (see February 11, 2008)

August Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

In August 1997: Linda Tripp encountered Kathleen Willey coming out of Oval Office “disheveled. Her face red and her lipstick was off.” Willey later alleged that Clinton groped her. Clinton’s lawyer, Bill Bennett said in the article that Linda Tripp is not to be believed. (see Clinton for expanded story)

August Peace Love Art Activism

Sexual Abuse of Children

In August 2005: The Diocese of Oakland, California, agreed to pay $56m to 56 people. (see December 16, 2006)

August Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY

In August 2010: some states delayed executions because of a shortage of sodium thiopental, a drug used as an anesthetic and given to prisoners during lethal injections. It was one of three drugs used for lethal injection in more than 30 states. Some states had been trying to get additional supplies of the drug for months. In August, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear was asked to sign death warrants for three prisoners in Kentucky but could set only one execution date because it only had a single dose. ‘We’ve had the drug on back order since March,’ said Todd Henson, a spokesman for the Kentucky Department of Corrections. ‘The company that supplies it to us advised that they were unable to produce it because they weren’t able to get the active ingredient from their supplier.’

Hospira, based in Lake Forest, Ill., was apparently the only manufacturer of the drug. The company told Kentucky officials it won’t be available until early 2011. (see Sept 23)